Year: 2015

Bumper edition this weekend, mostly because I’ve had a bit of free time and have been reading a lot more. Another mixed bag of things I found interesting, enjoy!

• Reading War and Peace on my iPhone
  This is the story about how I read War and Peace on my iPhone. According to some scholars and pundits, I probably shouldn’t have done this. These days, critics of digital reading worry that serious literature sort of can’t be adequately read on high-tech devices.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1KfDcne
• Working Out Motivation : Here’s How To Make Your Exercise Habit Stick
  It’s not always easy to convince yourself to exercise after a long day of work. (Ok, it’s never easy.) But people who consistently manage to do it may be using a simple trick—whether they realize it or not—according to a new study published in the journal Health Psychology.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1JW967j
• The Cognitive Benefits of Doodling
  Some new books tout the benefits of informal drawing and freehand scribbling—even for the unartistic. When computers entered the mainstream, some art schools abandoned drawing classes to make time for the new software they had to teach.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1Mi4t7J
• An Open Letter to The Guy Who Puked Next to Me at the Heavy Metal Festival.
  I’m not sure how much you remember about the first time you vomited last Sunday afternoon.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1vzb3Tb
• Is This New Swim Stroke the Fastest Yet?
  I tug my black swim cap over my hair, strap on my pink goggles, and keep a focused calm, like Michael Phelps before a race. It’s lap swim on a Monday afternoon at my local YMCA, and I’m going to attempt the fish kick. Most fish move through the water with a horizontal wiggle.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1IEZudS
• Men: a list of shit I am tired of because of you
  I am tired of men thinking they are entitled to my attention because they find me attractive. I am tired of men thinking I owe them something as a thanks for them finding me attractive. I am tired of men reducing me to my attractiveness. I am tired of being on display.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1MkTz14
• When Woman Is Boss: Nikola Tesla on Gender Equality and How Technology Will Unleash Women’s True Potential
  The legendary inventor predicts “the acquisition of new fields of endeavor by women” and “their gradual usurpation of leadership.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1INZpZL
• The Condensed Guide to Running Meetings
  We love to hate meetings. And with good reason — they clog up our days, making it hard to get work done in the gaps, and so many feel like a waste of time.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1H3jfM0
• Time management is only making our busy lives worse
  Imagine your life without time, without a constant sense that you’re running behind, frustrated that yet again you are losing the battle against the irresistible force of the ticking clock. Imagine not wishing there were more hours in the day. We haven’t always been obsessed with time.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1Lb7zMj
• Serena Williams Wins Wimbledon for Her 21st Grand Slam Title
  After winning her fourth consecutive Grand Slam title on Saturday at Wimbledon, the tennis star has become one of the most accomplished American athletes of all time. No major sport—with the possible exception of gymnastics or swimming—worships youth like tennis.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1SfLoEW
• When the Revolution Was Televised: Live Aid 30 Years Later
  Thirty years ago today, at lunchtime in the U.K. and just before breakfast on the East Coast, 1.5 billion people sat rapt in front of their television sets, waiting for the revolution to be televised.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1O06gPo
• Hello, Pluto
  We are all on the cusp of something big. For the first time in history, a spacecraft will be able to see the crags and cliffs of Pluto up close, revealing a new world to humans who have been waiting patiently for more than nine years on Earth.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1K2ErFh
• The history of British slave ownership has been buried: now its scale can be revealed
  The past has a disconcerting habit of bursting, uninvited and unwelcome, into the present.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1ISfDRQ
• 3 Simple Steps To Boost Your Memory
  If we ever meet and then we meet a second time, and I greet you by saying, “Hey man,” it’s not because I’m an ultra casual kind of guy, it’s because I’ve forgotten your name. But please, don’t feel bad. It’s not because you’re boring or unimportant or uninteresting.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1K3Fm8y
• Chemical Apple Pie: Apple Pie Without The Apples
  The first in a series about recipes that may seem odd or outmoded and yet we’re curious to try!
  Read: http://ift.tt/1zGmuur
• Berkeley Breathed Publishes First New ‘Bloom County’ Strip Since 1989
  Generally, when a beloved comic strip disappears from the funnies page, it is gone for good, and its characters live on only in reprint collections and greeting cards, as parade balloons and insurance spokes-characters.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1M2umdU
• Inside The Colorful, Hypnotic World of Textile Mills
  In one textile mill, the floor shudders as clanging, oily machines churn out dainty, colorful fabrics. In another, sheets of lace are quietly created on century-old looms. Welcome to the wide-ranging world of American textile mills, circa 2015.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1L3g1go
• The Deck of Cards That Made Tarot A Global Phenomenon
  Picture a deck of tarot cards. What do you see? Maybe the Magician in his rich red robes, right arm raised high above him. Or the skeleton on horseback for Death. Or maybe you think of The Hermit in grey, holding his lantern, walking with a staff, featured in the artwork for Led Zeppelin IV. 
  Read: http://ift.tt/1gs8A7i
• The battle for the BBC
  On 18 March 2015, two past and future culture secretaries ran into one another at the Tower of London, William the Conqueror’s great fortress on the Thames – historical locus of unbending power, political reversals and untimely executions.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1L4lO6Q
• This Is How Uber Takes Over a City
  Charlie Hales, the mayor of Portland, Ore., was running a zoning hearing last December when he missed a call on his cell from David Plouffe, the campaign mastermind behind Barack Obama’s ascent.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1fAMWgM
• How Sleep Deprivation Decays the Mind and Body
  Getting too little sleep can have serious health consequences, including depression, weight gain, and heart disease. It is torture. I know. I remembered the hallway I had been wheeled down, and the doctor’s office where I told the psychiatrist he was the devil, but not this room.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1eQkCow
• Dave Grohl is a back-aching, coffee-guzzling, minivan-driving classic rocker
  NEW YORK — Even before he fell off a stage in Sweden and broke his leg, Dave Grohl was feeling creaky. He is 46, drinks too much coffee, and wakes up at 6 wherever he is, even on days he doesn’t need to pack lunches and get the kids into the Honda Odyssey.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1NkrMhp
• The Web We Have to Save
  Seven months ago, I sat down at the small table in the kitchen of my 1960s apartment, nestled on the top floor of a building in a vibrant central neighbourhood of Tehran, and I did something I had done thousands of times previously. I opened my laptop and posted to my new blog.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1TAJNvT
• Deep Intellect
  ON AN UNSEASONABLY WARM day in the middle of March, I traveled from New Hampshire to the moist, dim sanctuary of the New England Aquarium, hoping to touch an alternate reality. I came to meet Athena, the aquarium’s forty-pound, five-foot-long, two-and-a-half-year-old giant Pacific octopus.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1LplJJA

This is infuriating.

I’m trying to write a post about how, recently, I’ve been reflecting on my approach to my life and how it’s been slowly changing over the past few years.

But I can’t seem to find a way to start it so I’ll just batter on…

Life is a journey.

(that was gonna be the opening line, what a middle-aged cliche!)

Thing is, that’s what I’m starting to realise more and more, that I have been on a journey without really realising it, I’ve been floating along, carried by the current but whilst I’ve gathered a little speed here and there, it’s only been the last couple of years I’ve started paddling.

Jesus. Listen to me.

I’ll cut to the chase, somewhere in my brain I have started to realise that I am less and less interested in STUFF AND THINGS and more and more focused on EXPERIENCES and PEOPLE.

I don’t buy as much STUFF as I used to.

I am loving being part of Yelp and going out to events, being around PEOPLE and having fun new EXPERIENCES.

I look around my flat and wonder what else I can remove, how did I end up with so much STUFF?

I still need to read this book.

I think I’m approaching the point where I’m ready to play this game.

It means getting things like my debt under control (so I can afford to EXPERIENCE more) and stripping back the THINGS in my life to only those that I need.

It feels a little bit like a cult or religion, and at that point my brain kicks in with the excuses born of years of commercialisation and ‘buying stuff is good’ advertising.

Perhaps my poly lifestyle is helping? Being poly challenges societal and cultural norms, it still catches me out sometimes (still feel a little bit of guilt when I ponder, maybe, if a casual partner is possible) but it has definitely opened my eyes to challenge other things about myself.

I’ve mentioned all of this before, removing negativity and noise, decluttering and simplifying where I can.

It’s just that now I’m starting to fully appreciate the fact that I’m on a journey and I think I know where it might be heading.

Hang on, there is a fork in the river coming up… hmmmm, left or right?

I’m really enjoying compiling these posts, I hope you are enjoying some of the selections.

• Apple Music’s a Crushing Disappointment, But Not Because It’s Bad
  What happened? By all accounts, Apple Music is a totally serviceable streaming music service. But it’s 2015. Give me more than the same old service everybody’s been offering for years.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1GNihm0
• Sky High
  On a warm July night in 2012, I watched the launching of a fireworks display I’d helped to build, and which our team of nine had spent a week installing as a competitive entry in L’International des Feux in Montreal, the most prestigious fireworks competition in the world.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1M1MwtS
• A Long Walk’s End
  When fugitive James T. Hammes went on the run, he went for a hike On a Saturday morning in May, 2015, a group of law enforcement agents, the FBI among them, knocked on the front door of the Montgomery Homestead Inn in Damascus, Virginia.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1UdnLkl
• The Women Who Secretly Keep ISIS Running
  The U.S. military campaign against self-proclaimed Islamic State may be focused on the male fighters conducting attacks across Iraq and Syria. But the richest human intelligence source to fall into U.S. hands to date is the widow of a senior ISIS member.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1S1kUHl
• What’s the Point of Handwriting?
  Sylvia’s handwriting was looping and crisp and clean. Though she was my girlfriend, I was, as with most girls I knew in high school, intensely jealous of her penmanship—of what seemed, at the time, like its unreachable, feminine perfection.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1TgE7qL
• Why Do TV Characters All Own the Same Weird Old Blanket? A Slate Investigation.
  You’ve seen it before: the multicolored, crocheted emblem of TV Americana. It features discordant colors and a chunky weave. It’s usually draped across the back of a sitcom sofa or at the foot of a bed. One day, I was watching The Big Bang Theory when I felt the tug of déjà vu.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1CVRRxU
• Well-Aimed and Powerful
  The astronauts walked with the easy saunter of athletes. . . . Once they sat down, however, the mood shifted. Now they were there to answer questions about a phenomenon which even ten years ago would have been considered material unfit for serious discussion.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1HKfPDM
• Social Issues: A Woman in Uniform
  Editor’s Note: In keeping with what’s clearly become a habit for the Social Issues section, we give the floor over to an under-heard—and in this case, quite controversial—voice in society: the police officer. This being Grey, hers is no ordinary point of view, and she’s no ordinary cop.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1BBsy7M
• Your next selfie could be your last, Russia warns
  The Russian government this week warned its citizens of the life-threatening dangers involved with selfies, as part of a new public awareness campaign.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1D0xD6d
• Facebook’s new friends icon takes the chip off the woman’s shoulder
  Following up on its subtle logo redesign last week, Facebook is introducing some new friends icons — or rather, Facebook design manager Caitlin Winner is introducing them. In a post on Medium, Winner explains how she changed the social network’s icons to bring women to the fore.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1dLwoB2
• How Grounded Is Your Love Life?
  Balancing on one leg may test the stability not just of your body but also of your marriage or other intimate relationships, according to a remarkable new study of how bodily posture may affect emotional thinking.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1TniUvu
• The rejectionists
  We can choose to define ourselves (our smarts, our brand, our character) on who rejects us. Or we can choose to focus on those that care enough to think we matter.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1g1mlti
• Gravity
  This essay, recommended by Longreads contributor Maud Newton, is by the writer Elizabeth Bachner and appears in the current issue of Hip Mama magazine. The first issue of Hip Mama was published in December, 1993, by the founding editor, Ariel Gore, as a multicultural forum for radical mothers.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1gqtgwp
• The Walking Dead
  This is the third piece in a three-part series on sleep. Read part one, on falling asleep, and part two, on sleeping and dreaming.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1JWKafV
• The 37 Best Websites To Learn Something New
  Forget overpriced schools, long days in a crowded classroom, and pitifully poor results. These websites and apps cover myriads of science, art, and technology topics. They will teach you practically anything, from making hummus to building apps in node.js, most of them for free.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1IQjvhI
• The Mixed-Up Brothers of Bogotá
  They were two pretty young women in search of pork ribs for a barbecue later that day, a Saturday in the summer of 2013. Janeth Páez suggested that they stop by a grocery store not far from where her friend Laura Vega Garzón lived in northern Bogotá.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1JVIJ1h

Another week, another set of things I’ve spotted on the internets, a few more than normal because I’ve been catching up. Enjoy!

• The stupid history of water guns
  For decades, water guns were benignly stupid things. Grown-ups still found a way to ruin them, because we ruin everything.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1GaXyLY
• How to Be Extraordinary: William James on the Psychology of the Second Wind and How to Release Our Untapped Human Potential
  “Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake… We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1JSAJ25
• How to Stay Focused in an Age of Distraction: A Beginner’s Guide to Meaningful Productivity
  I bought the original iPhone the summer it came out. That was 8 years ago, and this internet-connected pocket computer has been within arms reach ever since. It’s awesome because I can do so much from just about anywhere at any time. But it’s terrible for the very same reason.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1TqjwkO
• How Email Became The Most Reviled Communication Experience Ever
  Email wasn’t always a source of fear and loathing. What happened? And what can we do about it—really? It wasn’t until I heard that a colleague had nuked his personal email account—on purpose, for good—that it hit me: Email is the most reviled personal technology ever.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1fciARk
• Honor System Exploited On Scottish Island That Had Been Crime-Free
  The crime rate on the small Hebridean island of Canna, Scotland, skyrocketed overnight this week, when thieves looted a shop that had used the honor system. Locals say it’s the first theft on the island in decades.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1QDVmVl
• How could they?
  ‘When I was 14 years old, this guy beat me down in the streets. And my stepfather took his life right in front of me. And I felt good about it, really.’
  Read: http://ift.tt/1FocbYd
• A boy’s lost stuffed tiger goes on an airport adventure
  TAMPA — Hobbes the stuffed tiger went on an adventure at Tampa International Airport. The plush toy, which belongs to 6-year-old Owen Lake, was left behind in the Tampa airport as Owen and his family traveled to Houston recently for a family member’s high school graduation.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1G9jaFe
• LeBron, Authority, And Power Basketball
  Friend-of-The-Classical and University of Michigan literature professor Yago Colás wrote a post at his blog about the gathering authoritarian blowback against LeBron James in the wake of his crazily heroic, ultimately futile push in the NBA Finals, and the way we see and don’t see authority on the court.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1K1Y5E7
• The inexplicable story of Steve Gosskie and featherbowling
  Featherbowling for Dummies – Step inside Cadieux Cafe, one of the few locations in the world that houses the unique sport known as “featherbowling.”
  Read: http://ift.tt/1fl1qkM
• Constructing the World’s Biggest (Disassemblable) City
  Every four years millions of Hindus celebrate the Kumbh Mela, the Festival of the Urn.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1HsNa3S
• ‘Claim Your Own Dancefloor’
  On the last day of 1977, as New York City’s landlords were finding greater profit in torching certain neighbourhoods than owning them, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards went to a party.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1egOUBZ
• Swole Without a Goal
  They’re the chosen few, the yokozuna. Kakuryū Rikisaburō, Hakuhō Shō, Asashōryū Akinori…. Seventy-one in number by some counts, they’re sumo wrestling’s elite, named after the braided length of rope that wraps, confection-like, around each tectonic waist.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1RLHV0C
• How Minions Destroyed the Internet
  Do you know what Minions are? I’m serious. I keep thinking that I know what Minions are, and then I’ll lose three hours on poorly maintained Facebook pages and Pinterest tags and emerge from my trance sweaty, short of breath, and somehow more baffled than I was before.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1GEvSPI
• After Supporting Inclusion Of Transgender Girls, Girl Scouts Crowdfunding Campaign Exceeds $250K
  Girl Scouts has just come out in support of transgender girls with an inspiring new crowdfunding campaign. The Girl Scouts of Western Washington accepted a $100,000 donation, but later learned it came with a stipulation: the money could not be used to support transgender girls.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1IONZka
• Don’t Touch That Dial — Cuepoint — Medium
  Back when I was walking uphill both ways to school we had this old fashioned thing called a radio. It had a dial for volume, a dial to change the channel, and a few buttons to save preset stations. You’d listen to music for awhile. A DJ would come on and tell you a bit about the music.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1NwEY3q
• Tennis serve in slow motion
  At 6000 fps, you can see just how much the racquet flattens a tennis ball on the serve.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1JxBX4l
• “SHARK!” by Peter Benchley – November 1967
  Note: Alfred Bester, senior editor of Holiday, encouraged Benchley to turn this article into a novel; Benchley took his advice and wrote Jaws. ONE WARM SUMMER DAY I was standing on a beach near Tom Never’s Head on Nantucket.
  Read: http://ift.tt/1NwzsgJ